A Double Nintendo Knitting Cast On & Alfie Turns One!

Marty! Have you forgotten to spring your clocks ahead by one hour? GREAT SCOTT, MARTY! We’ve gotta go back to the future and fix this!

Oh you’ve already changed the clocks? Phew… We almost destroyed the space time continuum there.

Yes it’s that time of the year again, yesterday morning we sprung our clocks ahead by one hour. Which in turn, like usual, messed up my sleep a little and It now gets dark an hour later in the day. (7 O’clock for me.) Hopefully your sleep isn’t too messed up, some years are worse some are better for me.

Spring is finally here and you wouldn’t think so because it’s actually getting cold again. It’s still snowing quite heavily in certain parts of the world and Jack Frost really is not giving up without a fight this year. So regardless spring has sprung inside the knitter inside of me and I’ve actually casted on TWO items this past weekend. As I announced Wednesday I finished my first sock of my Afterthought Heel Self Striping socks I’m making for my sister.

In order to distance myself away from second sock syndrome as much as possible I’ve gone ahead and casted on my second sock as well as knit the first four rows, which includes the first cable row that I’m putting into the ridge of these socks. Was a little concerned when starting this sock; I almost thought I was knitting this inside out or something. These rows seem to be coming along nicely and (I’m hoping) it seems to be matching up with the first sock. It would suck if they ended up looking off from each other but I believe I started this ball with the same tail length. Mum was the one to ball up this yarn a couple of years ago and claims they were balled evenly so it should all work out in the end.

Have I mentioned this before? I’m actually doing my knit cables with a paperclip, well It was a paper clip until it was bent and morphed to work like a cable needle. Of course I could have used a normal cable needle but all the cable needles seemed way to large for these stitches and I didn’t want them stretched out so a paperclip seems to of sufficed nicely. It was a tad bit awkward working with it and I’ve accidentally dropped a couple of stitches because of that but things are coming along nicely, I only have three more cable rows to completely. Let’s hope I can keep outrunning second sock syndrome and get this sock done. I won’t be adding in the heels to either sock until I’ve completed both, that way I can do both at the same time without time making me forget the process.

Now that was only one project I casted on this weekend… I’ve casted on a brand new project!

A dishcloth… Yup another dishcloth, I seem to becoming ZAK the Dishcloth Knitter, ha. This will mark my 8^th cloth related project since becoming a knitter. A recently realization has come to me that I’ve actually started 15 projects since becoming a knitter and I’ve finished most of them so far, with some like my shawl still in progress. That’s absolutely crazy to me for some reason; I started knitting back in September which means… 7 months?! Wasn’t not that long ago I was mentioning that I was knitting for about 4 months? That means I’ve been running my blog for almost 6 months now, maybe I should do a special 6 month blog… Hmmmm… Anyway I’m getting off track here, the new project! Yes this dishcloth comes from a pattern written by a knitter designer I featured last Friday on my blog Celebrating MAR10 aka Super Mario Day!. This is a Princess Peachdishcloth!

Well you can’t see it yet, I haven’t gotten that far yet, but once I’m finished it’ll look just like this.

Photo Courtsey of Carolyn Lislie on Ravelry

Princess Peach has made a seamless (Seamless… Get it?) transition to knitted cloth. This pattern was written by Carolyn Lislie and really well I have to say. Peach herself is based on her appearances in the Paper Mario series which is probably a lot easier to transition to a knitting pattern then say Peach’s usual appearance. Though I gotta ask, would she now be called Knitted Peach instead of Paper Peach? Hey Nintendo here’s an idea, get some guys together (Psst I’ll help.) to make a Knitted Mario game to go along with Yoshi’s Wooly World, that would actually be pretty awesome.

It might look complicated but this pattern is actually just a combination of knits and purls. This pattern comes with a chart and a written form of the pattern so if you’re not great at reading patterns you can just follow along with a written version. I’m going to try to knit via the chart, I’m not great at charts and I’m still trying to learn how to read them but I like a challenge and I really want to get used to knitting charts.

I’m using US 7 (4.5 MM.) size needles and the yarn I’m using… Well it’s kind of a throwback to when I first started up the blog. Remember my round dishcloth blog ZAK Knits: Dishcloths Come Full Circle? When I first started knitting all those months ago I got the chance to go and buy some cotton yarn balls to knit some dishcloths. Shockingly I was silly enough to buy two of the same color instead of 4 different colors… but wait these actually ended up NOT being the same. While one was just a Peaches & Crème Candy Sprinkes this one is a little different, being called Candy Sprinkes Twists. This yarn has eluded me since I bought it, it’s got four strands of different colors twisted together but it also feels really odd when knitting it. I guess it’s kind of coarse in a way? This yarn is cotton, no doubt about it, the same as my other Peaches & Crème yarn balls but it feels completely different. Gotta watch when knitting this, it feels like it’s sucking all the moisture out of my hands and makes my hands start to feel dry and hot if I knit this too fast. When it’s knitted it feels pretty normal, the same as the other projects I’ve knitted using Peaches & Crème. What a strange yarn this is… Anyway I’m going to keep knitting at this; it might not take me long so you may see the final product within a week maybe, if I don’t get too confused by the chart. Wish me luck! I really want to get better at reading charts.

Anyway don’t forget to go check out this pattern on Carolyn’s Ravelry page! I highly recommend it and her other amazing Mario dishcloths for any Mario fan who just so happens to knit!

Yesterday aka March the 12th marked the very first birthday of my Chihuahua Alfie! We got him when he was 8 weeks old back in April of last year and we've watched him grow into the dog he is today. He thinks he's the biggest dog in the world now despite still being a small Chihuahua. Here's a comparison of when he was 8 weeks old compared to a photo we took on his birthday yesterday!

Alfie sure has grown over the past year and Dad seems to of really taken a liken to him. I think he's become sort of a daddies dog in a way. Alfie now weighs 7.6 pounds which is a lot bigger then the little tiny guy he was back then. I actually have a video here that I uploaded (Technically reuploaded because ZAK Entertainment didn't exist when this video was made.) that shows of Chihuahua when he was 9 weeks old.

I actually made a post about our Chihuahua back when I first began this blog called Sir Alfred The Great so go check that out!

Before we wrap for the day has anyone tried this meal before? I don’t have a photo sadly but last Friday I had this gorgeous Red Beans and Rice meal. We have this every so often but last Friday’s was a little special. This time we had some of these Multi-Grain Bread Pocket Thins to go with them. I think it was the Orowheat brand we had but anyway I really thought these went great with the meal. If you’ve seen them before they look like just around bread slices but when you cut them in half they function as a little pocket you can stuff food such as red beans and rice into. These are really good and the pocket thins hold the food nicely, no spillage when eating. The multi-grain adds such a nice and complementary taste to whatever you add inside it. So yeah if you ever pick up some of these Pocket Thins try it out with Red Beans and Rice… or Vice versa.

That’s a wrap folks!